Are you and your family planning on spending Halloween away from home? Maybe you're taking a camping trip over Halloween weekend? If so, then you're in for a treat. Many campgrounds have trick-or-treating, haunted houses, haunted walks, special parties, and more. You can even carve pumpkins to make your campsite more festive!

One of the most important aspects of Halloween is putting together your costume. Assembling your own costume is one really fun part of Halloween preparations and festivities. With all of the costumes sold in stores, homemade costumes are becoming less common. Creating your own original costume is a fantastic way to really get into the spirit of Halloween.

There are a few simple ways to get a costume together. Step one is to come up with and idea. There are no limits on what you can imagine. Your ideas can be scary, heroic, dramatic, kooky -- whatever interests you the most. You need only remember that your idea needs to be one that is actually possible to make and it also needs to be wearable.

Thrift stores are great places to get pieces for your costume. They often have items that are specifically saved for Halloween. If you can sew, you can choose your fabric and pattern at a fabric store. Often, you will find a fabulous selection of Halloween costumes. You can also use your access to nature to create parts of your costume. Shells and flowers make terrific accessories.

Shells make a creative and artistic addition to princess costumes. If you collect plenty of beautiful shells they can be strung into a necklace or even attached to the collar of a dress. Flowers make nice hair ornaments.

If you want a mask, you can use leaves. All you need is to get a simple mask, which can be bought at most stores around Halloween, glue and the leaves you want to use. Branches and sticks can be used as walking sticks, and if you are so inclined and have the right costume, you can create and string your own bow and arrows. Mud can also be a good part of a costume, should you need to look dirty, or if you just want to use it like face paint.

While you are camping, you have the chance to meet lots of different people. Maybe the new people will help you come up great costume ideas. If your campground doesn't already have planned Halloween festivities you can take charge and plan some for everyone who wants to participate. You could even organize a costume contest so you can celebrate and showcase all of the creative Halloween costumes of your fellow campers.

The costume is only one part of the whole Halloween celebration. You should also figure out how to make your evening as spooky fun as possible. Ghost stories are a great way to add a little scare to your night. Sharing ghost stories over the campfire is always fun -- just make sure your stories suit the audience. After everyone has spent the evening trick-or-treating, enjoying the jack-o lanterns and participating in all of the Halloween festivities you can find, be prepared with your best ghost story to share with you newfound friends.